There are major automobile throughfares around the world today, along with some impressive ones that include animals and bicycles among the lot in Asia and elsewhere. I was just thinking about what things looked like in there past.
I can speak only to American highways (as they were called even before the automobile).
In the east, you had highways, which were usually well maintained toll roads; roads, which varied in quality from well maintained gravel roads to wagon ruts in mud; and trails, which could be wide enough for wagons or narrow enough to permit only the passage of a horse.
The highways between major eastern metropolitan areas were often wide (as much as 60 feet), smooth, and smooth surfaced with crushed rock. A traveler would be part of a steady stream of foot, horse, and carriage travelers. Huge wagons with twelve foot diameter wheels moved freight between the cities. Inns and taverns every few miles offered food, drink, and lodging for man and beast. Toll stations every twenty to fifty miles collected fees used for the maintenance of the road, and to repay the debt taken on building the road.
Thomas Searight's The Old Pike provides a good colloquial picture of the Cumberland Road, the interstate freeway of it's day.